A MAN WHO LIVES in Singapore has been told by HP that he can't buy one of its AMD Athlon XP-M laptops.And while the chips that go in the HP notebooks are tested in Singapore and packaged in Malaysia, you won't be able to buy a machine using these chips if you live in these countries.

John Serink told the INQUIRER that he's been trying to buy an HP notebook for the last three months. And now he's finally been told that he just can't have one.

John told the INQ: "All HP has to do is build me what I want in USA, Oz or NZ, call Fed Ex and ship it to me. But that's using common sense, which is not allowed in the 'New HP'".

He said that after sending around 25 emails to HP Singapore and HP USA, and gradually escalating the problem, he received a message from Audrey Leck at HP, compounding his dilemma.

She told him: "With the consideration of future support, spare part supply and product marketing potential problems that may arise from selling such unsupported product in Asia Pacific, our corporate management has to make a decision not to sell it in this region at this point in time.

"HP being a customer focused organization, we wish to ensure that we sell only products that can be professionally supported in the region that we sell it. We also do not wish to confuse our staff or channel partners for having some isolated cases of unsupported products sold here. The implication can be a lot wider than we could foresee and the customers who purchased such unsupported products may ended up as unhappy customers".

John Serink told us: "Can anyone at HP worldwide sell me the laptop I want? Or is everyone at HP in fear of being confused?"

He said that he pointed out to Audrey that to fail him in post sales support, HP would first have to sell him something. µ